The 70s and diet - what were we eating?

[Alicay]

Watched a programme about The Cure last night. There was footage of the group from '81 (I think) and they were all like pipe cleaners - that really slight, skinny look. Not an inch on them. Growing up I can remember the majority (of young people at least) having that kind of physique. Also, recently saw Gregory's Girl and was struck by the school scenes - kids all like whippets. Now im fat and in my fifties I'm trying to remember what I/people ate. think for me it was cornflakes with sugar for breakfast, orange juice then modest packed lunch (I never got crisps, but some kids got a packet of walkers) or a disgusting school dinner of meat pie and veg that I barely touched) dinner was always vegetable soup then say pasta (fancy, but Italian roots) then stewed fruit. I'd be raging hungry on that diet now. Thinking about it maybe food was just less appealing/quantities smaller? Is it all just down to the extra snacks we have now?
Any 70's/earlier people remember better than me?

I never ate breakfast and sometimes I wouldn’t even drink all day long as there were no water bottles like today and I hated the warm bottle of milk you would get in primary school (I still hate milk!)

When I was in high school I had money to go to the village shop and ate a sausage roll and jam and cream doughnut every day. So no I didn’t eat healthier!

I don’t particularly remember what we ate at home apart from a big roast on a Sunday and egg and chips on a Monday as there was nothing left in the fridge from the weekend. I remember homemade rice pudding and bread and butter pudding too. There were no snacks. I don’t even remember biscuits or crisps being available. It was whatever was for tea and that was it. I remember my brother eating tons of cereal in the evenings as a teenager but I didn’t.

Yes to playing out all day and not thinking of food or drink. Life did not revolve around fast food, takeaways, deliveroo, cafes, hot chocolates, eating out, share bags of sweets, 24 hour supermarkets etc like it does today.

I did snack on jam sandwiches
We had crisps and biscuits and made cakes and the sweetie shop - but I was a growing teen and my parents didn't eat that stuff

And the cake slices were tiny compared to todays - a 4/4/2 cake would make 8 portions whereas I use a 8/5/3 mix for 8

And you had to walk everywhere - even if just to the bus stop

Winalot! You ate dog food?!

Women really didn’t drink at all. They didn’t go to the pub and beer was for men. Wine in the house wasn’t a thing. Maybe a G and T if you were having friends round for dinner and that was it. My parents didn’t drink at all. I got a job in a bar part time when I was at College. My mother was horrified and came in to persuade me to leave! I didn’t .
Also didn’t eat out at all. Maybe tea in a tea shop, and that was a very rare treat.

We didn't spend all our time sitting on our arses back then. No Internet, not much TV. We had to walk or bike everywhere. Now most people drive. No junk food, no takeaways, no eating out. My parents were brought up during the war and were very careful around food, smaller portions and left overs. The whole way of living was just different.

The new album is awesome BTW. It's up there with Disintegration imo.

I actually don't think food in the 70s was that less processed than now because it was the beginning of supermarkets and frozen food and kitchen gadgets becoming the norm.
Plastic cheese, Findus crispy pancakes, burgers, oven chips etc.
Not to mention the fizzy drinks and all the chemical additives which are now banned, frying everything in lard and general ignorance around what constitutes a healthy diet.
The main difference was back then we all lead more physically active lifestyles as car ownership was generally lower - commonly one per household, or none at all. We all rode bikes, and walked everywhere. Driving kids to school wasn't common as all kids went to their local school, regardless. The internet and how it has changed our daily lifestyles alongside the growing necessity for cars has played a large part in making our lifestyle more sedentary, in my opinion.

My mum's favourite saying was 'Enough is as good as a feast'.

People ate far less than they do now, mostly due to budget constraints, but also because being greedy was considered an undesirable character trait, and it was unfair on others to have more than your fair share of what was available.

@DeathpunchDan I think it really depends on your household. We didn't eat anything like Findus pancakes. My mum cooked everything from scratch. No jars of sauce either. We were pretty poor. No oven chips.

I remember having a tiny punnet of strawberries. We'd have 3 or 4 small strawberries each in a small glass bowl.

I also remember boiled potatoes. Large potatoes, peeled, cut in half and boiled znd served just like that. They looked so pale and miserable.

We moved a lot more - walked to and from school, breaktimes outdoors in the playground.

There was no snacking, we were told to wait until dinner or whatever, and sweets only came out at Christmas or Easter.

So basically we moved more and consumed less.

What I don’t get is that I didn’t walk everywhere. We lived rurally and so a bus collected me from home and took me to school. If I wanted to go to a friend’s house, youth club, brownies anything like that then I was driven. There were no pavements. I walk a lot more these days as I live in a town and it’s only a mile from my house to the town centre.

I don’t recognise the ‘people didn’t drink’ that keeps being mentioned. My folks drank every single night, and still do. A beer or cider at 6pm then a whiskey before bedtime. They are both as fit as fiddles even in their 70s.

Mum was at home during the day so made everything from scratch. As others have said though, no snacks. But I did have a quarter of sweets on a Sunday. Mum refused to cook on a Sunday as in her words ‘every other bastard has the day off’, so Sundays were cheese and crackers.

60s & 70s childhood here. I was called "Chubby" & even "Fatso" (cheers DBs!) but I wasn't even remotely obese, just not a twig like DBs & then developed an hourglass shape at puberty. Anyway, I don't think diet had much to do with it back then. As others have said, we were much more active. With only 3 TV channels & not many geared towards children, it was more interesting to meet up with other local kids & play outside for hours. I'd be cycling, walking, climbing trees, roller skating, running around playing games like tag & British bulldog. Also we almost never had take aways, maybe once a year. Meals out were also a rarity, just a few times a year would we go out for dinner.

Really interesting thread and somewhat brings up one of my parenting struggles in sugar. I was given almost unlimited sugar as a child not in the sense that it was coke for breakfast and biscuits for dinner but we had dessert every day, a fizzy drink was never not allowed if I had the funds, little bowls of sweets at home, sugary tea and a biscuit or jam sandwiches when returning from school.

Additionally, food was probably quite fatty and calorific, being stodgy with cheap cuts of meat, fried food a plenty and dairy was always full fat. Crisps in every packed lunch.

Yet, I never had any dental problems, still got good teeth, none of us were overweight and I'm in quite good health still. To be fair we lived in London, the family (as in my extended family, including grandparents) shared one car and we walked everywhere.

Now, I feel conscious that a smoothie may contain too much sugar or I'm fast tracking the DC to obesity by allowing crisps and biscuits!

School lunches:

I went to a private school that, looking back, was really quite 'forward thinking'. We were served the main part of the meal (a roast featured once or twice a week, or there was a chicken pie, or cottage pie- that sort of thing) and roast potatoes, but the vegetables (including boiled potatoes) were serve-yourself, and you could go back for more veg and gravy if you wanted. You collected your pudding at the same time, and if you didn't fancy it (blancmange and creme caramel were my two hated puddings) you could have half a Golden Delicious apple. I never needed snacks after school, on that lunch.

When I moved to a different school that had cafeteria-style lunches, nearly everything was processed- fish in batter, or spring rolls etc. I would have a baked potato with cheese but remember being starving on the way home. It was the 80s by that time and I think there'd been a huge explosion of processed food availability.

I think it was exercise that kept the kids slim. I remember in the mid seventies when I was at primary school I would come home for lunch so walking to school and back four times a day ! Then we would always be playing out, riding our bikes etc for hours, climbing trees, out for family walks at the weekend. No screens and didn't go everywhere by car. Chocolate and sweet stuff was just at the weekend, a yoghurt was a treat midweek. There was none of this processed stuff like packaged crossants, waffles etc. I remember the first thing I got addicted to was those little pre packed french toasts in the late seventies. My weight problems started as a teenager mid eighties with crap school dinners- greasy sausages and chips or chips with piles of cheese on the top, whoever thought that was a nutritious lunch for a teenager. Then processed foods expanded and takeaways really took off in the eighties.

(early-mid) 1970s
No (or very minimal) convenience food. No fast food like McD. No eating between meals. No junk food home deliveries. School dinners were meat and veg followed by sponge and custard (usually pretty rank but that’s all that was on offer).

Sweets once a week when my mum did the weekly shop. No raiding the cupboards or fridge (that would have got a telling off and a clip round the ear).

We were working class poor but never went without, we were not allowed to eat between meals so I remember always being really hungry waiting for lunch/dinner. It’s become a habit nowadays to constantly snack, I’m just as guilty as others for doing it.

@Miley1967 Yes, you're right. Nobody would dream of spending good money on petrol to ferry kids around when they had a perfectly good pair of legs!

Something else which played a part was that most households had one car, and that was driven to and from work by Dad. Mum was a housewife she & the kids had to walk everywhere. Not all households even had a car, let alone two, which is the case now.

The other thing of course, is that children went to their local school, nearest to where they lived so almost everyone was within walking distance anyway.

Where I grew up, it was definitely the lack of snacking. In fact, eating or even drinking while walking around was considered massively bad manners - eating was to be done at the table, at mealtimes. Now people seem to be constantly eating and parents can't leave the house without a bagful of snacks.

We didn't snack the way people do now. A packet of crisps was a treat and when we had biscuits we had two and no more. We only drank tea (tbf that's still true for me ) and food was generally not as appetising. Also many houses had no central heating so we burned more calories keeping warm. I was rake thin, 2 stone lighter than I am now and I'm still not officially "overweight".

Also people smoked more which is a known appetite suppressant.

@BrunchBarBandit I was hungry a lot, too. I did a lot of sport and exercise, but there was little to eat - either at home or at school. Portions were small and you didn't get to eat 'between meals'.

We would have a small bowl of cereal for breakfast and then whatever was provided for school dinners - often mince and cabbage, followed by sponge and custard or rice pudding. Helpings were small.

My mother was quite a good cook, but I suspect they had little money. She once told me when I was married that she used to buy 1lb of mince and 1lb of sausage meat and make that last 4 meals (there were 6 of us in the family).

So she would make spaghetti and meatballs with 1/2 lb (225g) sausage meat. And feed 6 of us. The other 225g would make scotch eggs for the next day - to be eaten with home cooked chips.

The mince was also divided in half for 2 meals of 6 portions. As you can imagine, there was little per person.

I remember at times, probably when having growth spurts in my teens, being constantly starving and being told 'don't be greedy' if you asked for more.

Sweets were on a Friday only - 10p to buy what you wanted. You could get a bar of chocolate or a quarter of sweets.

I certainly didn't get very excited about food in the 70s.

We had cornflakes or branflakes and whole milk for breakfast.

Heinz tinned tomato soup with cheesy croutons and Angel Delight for lunch and some kind of meat, potato and veg for dinner. Roast every Sunday lunchtime.

Treats were homemade yoghurt and occasional pancakes, sometimes cream cakes from the bakery or malt loaf and butter. There were more puddings than now.

After school snack usually more cornflakes.

Friend's mum made Smash (just add water mashed potato) every meal which was disgusting.

School dinners were endless spam and textured soya protein. Utterly disgusting. Eventually my mum started making me Brie sandwiches instead.

Needless to say, I was slim.

Ah yes mid morning milk at school!!!

Same in workplaces. Food is so prevalent in our office that there is a designated food table piled high with tins of biscuits, cakes, sweets etc. It shouldn't be allowed ! Every team meeting involves cakes being passed around. I know I need to find willpower to say no but it's so hard when it's constantly in your face. Every work event/ networking event etc has tables of cakes too. And I work with a bunch of feeders, fortunately one slides healthy snacks fruit and nuts across the desk to me but others just dump huge slabs of cake in front of me without even asking.

Did anyone else's family celebrate you being 'good eaters'? It seemed to be seen as a mark of good parenting. Come to think of it, my grandmother's house was always full of cakes. And snacks.

School tuck shop sold sweets and crisps. High school had vending machines and sold pizza and bacon butties at break time. Yr 11 were allowed to go to the chippy at lunch. I can remember making myself sandwiches after tea, because I was still hungry. But I was a tall girl, who grew and grew. My appetite definitely decreased in my 20s.

I'm not it is as simple as 'we ate less and exercised more'; I know I didn't.
I do remember the sudden drive to give up smoking in the 90s- and relatives bemoaning suddenly putting weight on. Everybody smoked, even occasionally,unless they were weird like my mum or a health nut like the woman on our street who used to go jogging. No one else went jogging.
But was sugar added to absolutely everything then?

We ate well but I remember being extremely hungry sometimes to the point of nausea before mealtimes especially on a Sunday when lunch was slightly later

Presumably most of the people at the Cure were very young adults/ late teens. I’m not saying people weren’t generally a lot slimmer then, they obviously were, but the people that tended to be heavier would not be at the cure or in the audience at top of the pops or whatever.
Looking back at family photos from that era, middle aged people were not all whippet thin like most of the young people.
As aside, most people in our old photos are smoking which you don’t see now. A fair few of them died in their 40s/50s/60s despite being thin as well.